It taxes the man who earns the money as well as him who inherits it.

It taxes earned income as well as income derived from investments; and in taxing the income derived from investments, it cannot make any edifying discrimination as to its source.

Finally, it would interfere with a much more serviceable plan of taxing the net profits of corporations subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal government--a plan which is an indispensable part of any constructive treatment of the corporation problem in the near future.
The suggestion that the inheritance tax should constitute a pillar of central rather than local taxation implicitly raises a whole series of difficult Constitutional and fiscal questions concerning the relation between central and local taxation.

The discussion of these questions would carry me very much further than my present limits permit; and there is room in this connection for only one additional remark.

The real estate tax and saloon licenses should, I believe, constitute the foundation of the state revenues; but inasmuch as certain states have derived a considerable part of their income from corporation and inheritance taxes, allowance would have to be made for this fact in revising the methods of Federal taxation.